The Cornerstone Read Online Free Page A

mouth, he groped his way to the chair and sat, putting his head in his hands.
    After a few minutes of recovery time he looked up, searching for the source of the crippling sound. He felt drained and incredibly tired, but needed to know where it’d come from, so forced his way to his feet in order to search.
    On wobbly legs, Max made his way along the aisle, holding the shelves for support, wondering how everyone else had been affected by the bombardment.
    He reached the fire exit and looked down the other aisle.
    Sure enough, the old woman who’d given him the funny look was still there. Max supposed she might be quite deaf – being in her seventies at least – but thought even she would have noticed a million people shouting aaaahhh at a volume usually reserved for thrash metal concerts.
    The pensioner looked quite serene however, sitting in her chair munching a scone. She’d obviously heard and felt nothing.
    Great. I’ve gone mad… or had a seizure of some kind.
    That sounded plausible.
    Just like Pete Schlitz, the German exchange student he’d known at school. Pete was epileptic and they’d all been told about the condition by their tutor, in case he threw a fit and needed help. Schlit-head – as he was affectionately known – had never done this in front of Max, but he could imagine what had just happened was similar to the type of thing Schlit-head experienced.
    Despite the idea of suffering something as serious as a seizure, Max actually felt a little better. The enormous noise was otherwise inexplicable – and he liked his world to be nice and explicable , thank you very much.
    Resolving to tell his mother and pay a visit to the doctors at the first opportunity, Max hobbled towards the exit.
    The noise started again.  Only this time it wasn’t loud enough to melt concrete.
    Instead it was now a soft, quiet sound that retained its unearthly quality, despite the drop in volume.
    Max didn’t know where his hackles were, but was sure they were now raised. He stopped in his tracks and listened, able to analyse the song now it wasn’t pounding his nervous system to a pulp.
    It was, in actual fact, quite beautiful.
    The million voices came from men and women of all ages. There were definite vocal ranges he could make out, from a low male bass to a high female soprano.
    He moved forward and the choir grew louder, indicating he was moving closer to its source.
    So much for it being a seizure… maybe I am going mad.
    If he was, it didn’t feel that unpleasant. The choir’s song filled him with a sense of drowsy well-being as he walked – or rather floated – along the aisles with an awestruck expression on his face.
    The library was pretty much empty, so nobody noticed the spaced-out seventeen year old boy wafting through the stacks like a dope fiend in a pair of helium trousers.
    The choir grew louder and Max’s hackles rose even higher.
    As did his testicles, which retreated as far up as they could go, knowing a potentially dangerous situation when they saw one.
    The volume continued to escalate and pressure mounted across his chest. The sense of well-being faded, replaced with considerable discomfort.
    He was being pulled along now, unable to break free of this strange siren song.
    Gasping for breath and going an alarming shade of blue, Max stumbled towards the saddest, oldest and tattiest looking bookshelf in the whole library.
    It was about four feet high and sulked in one corner near the children’s section, against a wall covered in brown hessian.
    A sign was hung above it on a drawing pin. In Imelda’s Warrington’s careful hand-writing it said:
    Books for sale.50p each. All money donated to local hospice.
    On the shelf sat a collection of second hand books, filed in no discernable order. Among the treats on offer was a book about carp fishing circa 1976, a copy of The Complete Works of Shakespeare - which looked anything but, two boy’s own World War 2 novels featuring hyperbolic titles and